Shell jewelry

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Shell jewelry for sale on a beach in Vietnam, 1990
Raratonga, Cook Islands
A Stone Age burial in Brittany dating from 5000-7000 BC shows the skeletons of two women who were buried wearing necklaces made of numerous shells of the sea snail Trivia.

Shell jewelry is

mollusks. Shell jewelry is a type of shellcraft. One very common form of shell jewelry is necklaces that are composed of large numbers of beads, where each individual bead is the whole (but often drilled) shell of a small sea snail. Numerous other varieties of shell jewelry are made, including bracelets and earrings
.

As well as sea snail shells, shell jewelry also sometimes uses the shells of clams (

mother of pearl or nacre, and the "trapdoor" or operculum
which is part of some sea snails.

In recent times, inexpensive shell jewelry is often found at tropical beach destinations, where it is offered to tourists as informal wear, or as a

archeology and anthropology
. In fact, shell beads are the oldest form of jewelry known, dating back over 100,000 years.

In prehistory

The oldest known jewelry in the world consists of two perforated beads made from shells of the sea snail

anatomically modern humans in Africa and the Levant were more culturally sophisticated than had previously been thought.[3][4][5] In some cases shells had been transported a considerable distance from the species' natural habitat. One example is the site of Oued Djebbana in Algeria, for example, where an N. gibbosulus bead was found; at the time the shell was used there, this site was at least 190 km away from the sea.[2]

Shell ornaments were very common during the

necklaces were made with the shells of 3 genera Spondylus, Glycymeris and Charonia.[7]

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Jewellery made with sea shells.

References

  1. S2CID 37796531
    .
  2. ^
    S2CID 31098527
    .
  3. PMID 15656934
    .
  4. PMID 17548808
    .
  5. PMID 19717433
    .
  6. ^ Fernández, Esteban Álvarez; Jöris, Olaf (2007). "Personal Ornaments in the Early Upper Paleolithic of Western Eurasia: an Evaluation of the Record". Eurasian Prehistory. 5 (2): 31–44.
  7. doi:10.4312/dp.40.21.Open access icon

Further reading

  • Roger Neich, 2004 Pacific Jewelry and Adornment, University of Hawaii Press, 189 pp.
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